By Nathaniel Luce
Throughout Daniel Cecalacean’s (EMBA’19) career, learning has come on the job, and judging by his trajectory alone, it’s easy to see how much he’s learned. What began as a senior customer care representative position at Emerson’s Orange Romania turned into system engineer, team leader, and then manager. In 2013, he relocated from Europe to Des Moines, Iowa, to manage one of Emerson’s Global Data Centers, with a frequent presence in St. Louis and the company’s headquarters in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2015, he moved into the business side of operations, as a Global Product Manager within Emerson Network Power, working out of Huntsville, Alabama.
The changes didn’t end there. When Emerson Network Power was spun-off and later acquired by a group led by private equity firm Platinum Equity in 2016, Daniel found himself adjusting to new challenges and expectations yet again.
“Throughout my entire career, I’ve learned a lot of things by doing, by being thrown directly into them,” he says. “I always in my mind felt that I needed something that was going to put all the pieces of the puzzle together that I’d learned so far, to glue my experiences.”
Making the Decision
Graduate education had long appealed to him – “it started 15 to 20 years ago; I was dreaming about going to schools like the ones I would see in movies, with direct and genuine interactions, discussions, and arguments” – but the timing was a challenge, with his responsibilities and locations changing frequently.
Daniel Cecalacean
He was already considering Executive MBA options in St. Louis before his promotion and relocation. Once he arrived in Huntsville, he connected with co-workers and Vanderbilt EMBA alums Jonathan Osborne (EMBA’12) and Patrick Quirk (EMBA’09). “I knew how good the alumni community was around (the Huntsville area),” he says, “and Jonathan and Patrick did a great job of further selling that to me.
“I had the conversation with my wife, and we both agreed that it wasn’t going to get any easier (to pursue a graduate degree), so I made the decision to apply.”
Huntsville
Vanderbilt Business has deep roots in northern Alabama, through the Executive MBA and other programs. Over 60 EMBA alumni and 100 Owen alumni across programs reside in and around Huntsville.
Every weekend, Daniel carpools with three classmates to Nashville. “It’s very convenient and entertaining,” he says. “We carpool on Saturday mornings at 5:30, engage in great conversations, and by 7:30, we’re sitting in class.” He connects with his C-team remotely, “but with Nashville being so close and traffic not being a problem, I go on off-class days two or three times a month to meet with team members or engage in other activities.”
The program opens up your eyes to all of the other things out there you can consider.
The hour-and-a-half commute compares favorably to his past experiences. “My commute to work in Iowa was a little under an hour, one way,” he says.
The alumni base in Huntsville has allowed him to connect with the local Vanderbilt community rather seamlessly. He interacts with Jonathan a lot, in and out of the office, and has reached out to other Vanderbilt contacts in the area.
Putting the Pieces Together
Daniel has found ample opportunity to bring lessons from the classroom into the office. “We recently completed the Managerial Economics class,” he explains, “and some of the ideas discussed in class and further debated with my colleagues I was very pleased to grab and apply the very next week at work.”
Coursework in classes such as managerial accounting and statistics are broadening his perspective but also giving him tools to improve upon specific tasks like data analysis and sales and operations planning. “It’s also easier for me to carry conversations and have the right business vocabulary when I present a business case now,” he adds.
Daniel understands that his education and degree will help him achieve his goals in a way that learning exclusively on the job may not. “I may have gotten those two or three promotions like that, but if I ever come across an opportunity for a more senior role, it’s going to be difficult without the credibility or specific knowledge the EMBA program affords,” he says.
Moreover, the program has broadened his view of what he can achieve beyond the corporate setting. “Another point that came up with EMBA alums is that corporate development isn’t all that’s out there,” he says.
“The more I go through the program and interact now, the more I realize that they were right…it can also be about running your own business. I’m not saying I’m going to start my own business tomorrow, I just never really thought I was going to be in a position to have access to this amount of knowledge and information to start thinking about it. The program opens up your eyes to all of the other things out there you can consider.”
To learn more about the Executive MBA program, please visit our program page.
